The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-06-02

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ton of some of our religious newspapers.
They lie on your center table : to
curse your children, and blast with
their internal fires generations unborn.
You find these books in the desk Of the
school miss, in the trunk Of the young
man, in the steamboat cabin, on the table
of the hotel reception room. You see q
lightin your child's room late at night
You suddenly go in and say:
'sWhat are you doingr'
81 am reading.n
ssWhat are You readingP'
"a book"
You look at the book; it Is bad book.
'sWhere did you get itl''
81 borrowed it."
Alas, there are always those abroad
who would like to loan your SON or daugh-
ter a bad book. Everywhere, everywhere
an unclean literature / charge upon it
the destruction of 10000 immortal souls,
and bid you this morning wake up to
the magnitude Of the theme. / shall take
all the worlds literature-good novel aud
bad, travels, true and false, histories,
faithful and incorrect, legends. beautiful
and monstrous, all tracts, all chronicles,
all epilogues, all family, city,
So0ec 0hA Az ooioAoA AiOh % ACo-6hA PAiO
them up in a pyramid Of literature, end
then shall bring to bear upon it some
grand, glorious, infallible, unmistakable
Christian principles. God help me to
speak with reference to my last account,
and God help you to listen.
I charge you, in the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pict-
ures of human life. Life is neither q
tragedy nor farce. Men are not all
either knaves nor heroes. Women are
neither angels nor furies. And yet, if
you depended upon much of the literature
Of the day, you would get the idea that
life, instead Of being something earnest,
something practical is ftful and fan
tastic and extravagant thing. How poor
~ prepared are that young man and wom-
an for the duties Of to-day who spent last
night wading through brilliant passages
descriptive Of magnificent knavery and
wickednessi The man will be looking all
day long for his heroine, in the tin shop,
by the forge, in the factory, in the count
ing-room, and he win not find her, and he
will be dissatisfied. A man who gives
himself up to the indiscriminate reading
Of novels will be nerveless, insane, and a
nuisance. he will be fit neither for the
store, nor the shop, nor the field.
A woman who gives herself up to the
indiscriminate reading Of novels will be
untitled for the duties Of wife, mother,
sister, daughter. There she is, hair dis
heveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale,
hands trembling, bursting into tears at
midnight over the fate of some I'M
fortunate lover; IN the day time, when
she ought to be busy, staring by the half
hoIlr Qt nnthfpOs hifinD ;1o
into the quick. The carpet that was plain
before will be palmer after having wan
dered through romance all night long
in tesselated halls Of castles.
And your industrious companion
viii be more unattractive than
ever now that you have walked
in the romance through parks with plumed
princesses, or lounged in the arbor
with the polished desperate. o, these
confirmed novel readersi They are un-
fitted for this life, which is tremendous
discipline. They know not how to go
through the furnaces Of trial through
which they must pass, and they are un-
fitted for world where every thing we
gain we achieve by hard, ong-continuing
and exhaustive work.
Again, abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture of
evil You have read books that had two
elements in them-the good and the had.
Which stuck to youa The badl The heart
Of must people Is like a sieve. which lets
the small nart;cIaa If cold FOL, +hro,,oh
but keeps the great cinders. Once in
awhile there is a mind ike loadstone.
which. plunged amid steel and hraas A.
ings, gathers up the steel and renels the
brass. But il ia penerallv iuet the onno.
site. If YOU attempt to plunge .thron OF a
fence Of burrs tn oet, one hIacLharrv vo,,
will get more burrs than blackberr;es
Won car Mt oro,d - .aaa IN .e,.
however good Won are Won saw.
.eThe influence ia insipnif;cant ),
tell Won that the scratch of a min no.
sometimes produced the loc,r. low Alas
If through curiosity "a MANY do von ~,
into an evil book. YOUR curiosity ia 40 dan
gerous as that Of the man who IA to lke
a torch into a gunuowder mill mere,v r.
see whether it would blow mn ornot
In menaeerie in New York a man mn,
his arm through the bars IF a hlacs
leopard's cage. The animals hide looked
so sleek, and bright and beautiful He
just stroked it once The monster se,zed
him, and he drew forth hand. torn and
mangled, and bleeding. o, touch not evi
even with the faintest strokel Though II
may be glossy and beautiful. tnuch II not